Something Changed
by AsItThunders
Summary: Somehow, some way, that'd all changed, and I never really knew how. Something was just different one day when I'd come down and seen him there on the couch." A short little one-shot that I really wanted to write. Review please!


**This a short little James and Lily that I wanted to write. A little different than my other ones. Let me know what you think.**

**There's some more important A/N for those who want to know about Stars info...**

**Also, this story is dedicated to AnimalAddictions. They are amazing and always give amazing reviews, and I read all their stuff! Go check out all their stories!**

**Summer Days,**

**AsItThunders**

* * *

**Something Changed**

I don't think I ever consciously acknowledged or admitted to myself when the hate had given way to dislike, dislike to tolerance, and tolerance to liking. It wasn't marked on my calendar; I hadn't scribbled it down in my journal. It seemed like one day I was telling him he made he sick, and the next I caught myself down in the Common Room with him. How can you yell at someone looking, for all the world, like a lost puppy?

* * *

It was Christmas break of our seventh year that I came down my bedroom steps after hearing noises in the Heads' Common Room. Tonight was the full moon so I wasn't expecting Potter back for at least a few more hours.

It was in Potter's habit to stumble in around two in the morning- cut, bleeding, and bruised. Most days he collapsed on the sofa from exhaustion and fainted. Sometimes, however, you could barely tell he was still conscious. Whatever his state though, I always crept down a few minutes after the portrait hole opened and started my work for the night.

I would start a fire in the grate, and then begin to attend to Potter. I washed all the grime and blood off his face and arms before I took medicine to the wounds so they would heal properly. Everything was done methodically with a certain rhythm every month. Occasionally, when I was bandaging up the worst of the wounds so the healing process could work more efficiently, I would feel his hazel eyes following me back and forth as I went, a somewhat puzzled crease to his eyebrows.

When I finished bandaging up the cuts, I would pull out my wand and mutter a simple healing spell I'd learned over the summer. It would take several minutes for the spell to work its way through all the cuts and gashes on his body. Occasionally there would be a broken nose I had to work on, or black eyes. And when I was finally finished, I conjured up a blanket and carefully wrapped it around him before casting a timed sleeping charm on him.

Tonight however, when I walked in to the Common Room, I saw a head peaking up from the couch. A head covered in messy black hair.

Wordlessly, I grabbed the bowl, cloth, and antiseptic and stooped down in front of James. He looked terrible tonight, worse than usual. His eyes were both blackened with bruises and red rimmed. A long, jagged gash ran from his temple to his chin and dried blood and bruises were everywhere. Fresh blood was still dripping slowly from the wound. This time was different though. It wasn't the blood and dirt that made him looks so terrible. It was the heart wrenching look of agony on his face. I'd never seen a more mature expression cross it before. Not in seven years.

James had already started a fire and was staring dully into it. His eyes didn't even flicker when I knelt down in front of him and took his battered hand in mine.

Slowly, I pulled out the cloth from the murtlap essence and watered it down slightly before beginning to rub lightly. His knuckles were especially cut up and bloody as though he'd been punching walls or something close to. When I poured on the hydrogen peroxide and antiseptic, he didn't flinch or even bat an eye. I almost had to stop and wonder if he really was all there. I wrapped his hand up lightly and moved to the next one. Here there was a long bleeding cut that ran up the underside of his arm and was rimmed by the blackest bruise I'd ever seen. Whatever had happened tonight, it had been bad. I set to closing up the skin with a spell I'd learned from the castle's matron.

Through all of this, James just stared blankly into the fire. No matter how much murtlap essence I put his cuts in, or how much hydrogen peroxide I poured on, or how much awful antiseptics I put on his open wounds, or even how much I lightly pressed on bruises, he didn't move a muscle. He didn't flinch, wince, clench his muscles, or whimper. I don't think he even blinked.

As I slowly finished speeding up the healing process of the bruises on one side of his face, I turned to the gashed side. Just as I reached up with the myrtlap cloth, he spoke for the first time in hours, and when he did, it was low, rough, and devoid of emotion. "Leave it."

I was startled by his sudden speaking but only shook my head. "Look, Potter, I'm almost done, and it wont take very long. I can give you some painkiller if everything-"

"Leave it." I was cut off again as I raised the myrtlap to start getting rid of the blood.

"I'm not just going to leave it when you're going to go off and do the Good Lord only knows what with it. You know, I think I like it better when you're unconscious."

"Leave-"

This time I was the one who cut him off. "James," I said gently. At my saying of his name, James looked at me for the first time all night. His usually bright hazel eyes were hauntingly dull. It was eerie to see James Potter like this. His facial mask was broken only by the slight furrow of his eyebrows. He was confused once again.

Slowly, I reached up and placed the myrtlap cloth to the gash and saw his eyelids flicker momentarily at the soothing feel of it. I didn't want to press too hard so I let all of the mess just run off his face and onto a towel. I brought up another smaller bottle of hydrogen peroxide and nearly winced. There was a lot of dirt and who knows what else left inside there, and even though the myrtlap was somewhat relieving, it wouldn't be enough to over up the sudden shock of pain. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw James clench his jaw in preparation but noticed his eyes were still following me as I twisted off the cap.

Tentatively, I reached up and placed one of my hands on his cheek and up to his temple where I softly angled his face down so the peroxide would fall onto the towel that was already laid out. For the slightest heartbeat, James let his eyes flutter close and stay close. For some reason, I felt butterflies erupt in my stomach.

I pulled the towel under his chin up tighter in case some of it slipped under. The hydrogen peroxide fell lightly onto the wound and began fizzling immediately. The sound brought back painful memories of summers with bloody knees and elbows. As I steadily reached further and further down the gash, I noticed James wincing slightly more with each one. Subconsciously or instinctively, I don't really know which, I started rubbing soothing circles with my fingertips on his temples like my mother had used to do for me.

The tightness in his eyes left slowly, and when the peroxide was gone and all the was left was my slowly massaging fingers, I thought I heard him let out a little sigh. Carefully I applied the medicine and muttered a faint, stronger healing than the other ones had been. As it finished healing, I saw a small, thin line remained barely visible, so think you'd have thought it was a trick of the light. Lighter than a butterfly's touch, I ran a finger across it before turning back to start cleaning up the supplies and put them in the cabinet on my staircase before coming back to James and standing in front of him.

I stared down at his haggard appearance for a few moments, and then raised my wand. Just as I was about to put him under for his sleep, his voice startled me again. "Don't."

I didn't do anything except get down to eye level with him and look him straight in the face, searching for an answer to his strange new mood. Usually he would have been singing for joy that his Lily Evans was touching him and on the face no less. "James," I said softly, and he met my gaze. There was such a haunted sadness there I felt compelled just to wrap my arms around him and hug him, give him some security. But I refrained. "Why weren't you with the others and Remus?"

Startled, he jerked his head up and stared at me suspiciously. "What about Remus?" he asked in a steely tone. I nearly laughed. There was some old James- deathly loyal as ever.

"I've known since second year, James. It was hard not to notice."

I saw a familiar twinkle flare up in his eyes and a curve threaten the corners of his mouth. "Yes, I'd forgotten. You're Lily Evans, aren't you?" After that, a slow, sad smile held his face.

"Look, James, do you want to tell me what happened? I don't like seeing you like this. It's eerie…" I trailed off and saw James return his faze to the fire, the haunting greater than before.

"I got the letter today." My face fell. That definitely explained his mood.

If you received the let these days it meant there'd been an attack on your friends or family. Death eaters, which meant Voldemort. Judging by the seriousness of it and the fact that he'd left his friends, I'd have to say family.

James' hazel eyes were quickly filling with tears, but he made no move to stop talking. "He got my family. All of them. My mum, my dad, my little brother and sister, even grandmum. They're all gone."

Gently, I reached up and traced the scar on his face. "And this?"

He was still staring in the fire like before, and I wondered, some where far away in the back of my brain, if it'd be a good idea to call Professor Dumbledore. His voice again held that dead, hollow sounding tone. "So, I went back to lunch and stumbled through the rest of my classes."

All of a sudden, I felt a rush of admiration to the boy I'd once hated. Somehow, some way, that'd all changed, and I never really knew how. Something was just different one day when I'd come down and seen him there on the couch. He'd know it was me, who else was there? And slowly, we'd become friends.

At first, that'd just meant less fights and no name calling, but slowly and surely we began to talk to each other and finish homework together. Somewhere along those lines as well, I'd managed to put aside my past hatred of him and open the door for something more. I guess we'd both been toying with that fine line long enough.

James went on. "And tonight, well you know what we do, and we started out okay. Then, I think, the grief sort of cam spilling out, and I kind of went mad. Ran off the trail in the forest, got caught in brambles and logs. Peter stayed with Moony and took him deeper into the forest while Sirius came tearing after me. By the time I was me again I started punching trees, yelling, pushed a couple rocks." Guiltily almost, James lifted his battered hands up.

I was still looking at him. "James, you did this to yourself?" I carefully undid his hand bandages and banished them to the garbage bin. Slowly, he twisted his newly healed wrists back and forth. Everything was red from the recent healing. Again, on instinct as though I had no say in the matter, I reached out and took his hands, rubbing slow, soft circles in the palms.

"I was mad and depressed at the same time. Not a good combination." He was looking down at our intertwined fingers. "Well, by the time Sirius got a hold of me, I was already going like a lunatic. He tried to pull me off it and get me to sit down, but I didn't and whipped around instead. Caught my face on the side of rock. I think after I lost a little blood I was woozy enough to be forced to the ground. He got the story out of me, told me to go back to the castle, and that he and Wormtail would be there in a couple hours. I figured you wouldn't be down until later, and I could pretend to be sleeping."

James had turned his gaze back to the fire and the deadened glaze was creeping back. "I'm sorry, James. I really am."

A slow, little smile spread across his face. "You know, I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing you say that."

"What? I'm sorry?"

A small chuckle fell across his lips. "No, my name."

For some reason it gave me great satisfaction to know I was the cause of his smile, a real, happy one.

I may not have known how we were going to get through all of this, but I did know that something had changed between us.

I hoped it was for the better. Only time would tell.

* * *

**My beta hasn't looked at it, and I did it in about twenty minutes. Review and let me know what you think!**

**Okay, for all of you who were hoping for something on The Stars Dazzle Me, I'm very sorry. I'm grounded for a week and so have no access for a computer. Now you're going, well how the heck did this get up here. I'm cheating on my grounding. Also, Stars is one of those stories I can only write on my computer, so it wasn't really not working having it. However, I thought it'd be nice to give everyone something. Just imagine what I'm doing for you all! When I'm ungrounded, I'll get to Stars ASAP.**

**Review Please!**

**Summer Days,**

**AIT**


End file.
